“Who played that kind of sick joke on you?”
For several long seconds, Scott stared at him in silence, but Joe held his gaze, determined to get an answer.
Scott looked down, not at his knees or Joe’s cock now, just down—like a man who had suddenly stopped believing he was worthy of looking another man in the eye.
Joe flexed his fingers, forcing them to relax out of a fist shape. Moving his hand to Scott’s throat, he slid it up, until the edge of his index finger was right under his chin. Tilting Scott’s head back, Joe made him look up.
“You’ve n-never been the guy on the outside l-looking in, have you?” Scott whispered.
Joe was used to seeing pain in a man’s eyes when he was administering a harsh whipping—but it was always the good kind of pain. The man in pain was always a hard-core masochist. There was always pleasure in his eyes too.
The pure agony in Scott’s gaze made Joe’s heart race and his stomach clench. It would have been easy to look away, but Joe forced himself to keep Scott’s gaze, no matter how uncomfortable the emotions that swirled around the car made him. “The outside?”
Scott’s lips curved into a strange mockery of a smile. “You were the most p-popular boy in school, right? I’ll bet both theboys and the girls were th-throwing themselves at you more quickly than you could w-work your way through them. And you s-sailed straight through your teens, looking all c-cool and gorgeous, didn’t you?”
Joe didn’t answer. He was still too busy trying to work out what the hell they were talking about.
“I… I was one of those kids who hit his g-growth spurt late. Add in skin you could play join the d-d-dots with, and me being scrawny as hell…” Scott’s Adam’s apple bobbed underneath Joe’s palm as he swallowed several times in quick succession.
Joe stroked his thumb back and forth over Scott’s jaw, as if he could actually make him feel better by doing that.
Scott gave a jerky shrug. “Kids can be cruel, but they’ve really got n-nothing on a certain kind of gay man. The guys I met just after I c-came out were all fashionable and gorgeous. They had m-muscles, and perfect skin, and expensive hair c-cuts. No w-wonder they thought I w-was an idiot.”
Scott tried to laugh, as if there was anything funny about the way those guys had treated him. Scott failed, but Joe didn’t even try to chuckle. His stomach twisted into a complicated knot as dozens of scenarios ran through his mind, each one worse than the last. He could easily imagine the kind of jokes some men would play on an easy target who was so desperate to please and be accepted. A bitter taste filled the back of his mouth. Fury bubbled in his veins. “I want their names.”
If nothing else, the demand made Scott look Joe in the eye. Some of the pain in his expression gave way to confusion. “W-why?”
“So I can kill them.”
Scott laughed. It was little more than a chuckle really, but it was genuine. The sound eased a little of Joe’s anger, but he still wasn’t sure he’d been joking. If any of the men who’d hurt Scotthad been there, Joe would have happily throttled every one of the bastards, one after the other.
Joe’s frown deepened. He never remembered being so desperate to hurt anyone who wasn’t already an enthusiastic masochist. He’d never realised he could feel so protective of another man either. Suddenly, neither Scott’s shyness nor his lack of confidence seemed so strange.
Joe forced the fingers on his right hand to uncurl. He even managed to turn his hold on Scott’s throat into something that wasn’t approaching a Vulcan death grip. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.
Scott shook his head. “It…it was y-years ago. I was still l-l-living at home. You d-don’t know them.”
That doesn’t mean I can’t track them down…
Joe cleared his throat. It was all he could do to keep those particular words back, instantly replacing them with more appropriate words was impossible. He sat in silence for a long time, replaying the scene in the back room of the pub over inside his head.
“It was me on the other side of the wall,” he finally managed to say, determined that there would be no more misunderstandings on that point.
Scott glanced up at him through his lashes. “I’m g-glad,” he whispered.
So was Joe. It was better than facing manslaughter charges against whoever had snuck into his place.
“I was watching you from the moment you stepped into the pub. I wouldn’t have let anyone else get to the glory hole before me.”
Scott silently nodded his understanding.
Joe took a deep breath, so far out of his comfort zone he had no idea how to get back into familiar territory. He had no map references for conversations this serious, no landmarks toguide him through deep, important discussions with a guy who’d just started submitting to him.
Joe glanced down at Scott’s fly and the situation became far easier to handle. In spite of everything, Scott was still sporting a flourishing erection. He wasn’tthattraumatised by the glory hole.
A bright fluorescent sign flickered into life inside Joe’s mind, completely overpowering the garish neon on the pub’s wall. An erection was something Joe knew how to deal with. They were practically his speciality.
“Did you like it?” Joe asked.
